The Life and Times of Jacques de Groote

Jacques de Groote, the former Executive Director to the IMF (1973-1994) and World Bank (1975-1991) for Belgium, was condemned in October 2013 by Swiss courts in an affair concerning the fraudulent privatisation of the principal coal mine in the Czech Republic.

His co-defendants, five Czech businessmen, were given fines and prison sentences ranging from 36 to 52 months. The five Czechs were found guilty of aggravated money laundering and fraud or complicity of fraud. These verdicts punish them for the misappropriation of assets of the Czech mining company MUS (Mosteck Uhelna Spolecnost) from 1997 to 2003. These five corrupt businessmen, some of whom were ex-executives of the company or members of its Supervisory Committee, had succeeded in gaining control of nearly 97% of MUS. Deposited in nearly one hundred bank accounts in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, the Bahamas, and elsewhere, the money they misappropriated was laundered via more than 30 intermediary companies. According to the Swiss daily, Le Temps, “Jacques de Groote participated in this massive deceit and received about one million Swiss francs in return. He played a shady role backing up the idea that there were possible foreign investors. Thanks to him, the five Czech businessmen could go forward wearing a mask.” [1] “He took advantage of his excellent reputation” and gave the Czech authorities and media information that he knew was “contrary to reality”, lamented Jean-Luc Bacher, president of the court, as he read out the guilty verdict. [2] According to La Libre Belgigue, which is generally favourable to him, following the judgement Jacques de Groote declared: “I will appeal this decision to show that I acted in good faith. It is crucial for me to put an end to this long chain of trials that has lasted for more than ten years, and ruined me morally, financially, and at 86 years old – physically”. [3]

, and there is a link between the role he played in these institutions and this affair brought before Swiss courts.

Chronology

1960 Jacques de Groote participates as a Belgian civil servant at the round table that prepared the independence of the Congo, which was proclaimed on 30 June 1960.

14 September 1960 Mobutu organises a coup against President Joseph Kasavubu and his Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. An interim government was set up, headed by Justin Bomboko.

October 1960 Mobutu has Patrice Lumumba arrested.

17 January 1961 Assassination of Patrice Lumumba in Katanga. Belgium, Mobutu, and political leaders from Katanga, including Moïse Tshombé, played an active role in this murder. The CIA also has a mission to assassinate Lumumba.
April 1960 to May 1963 J. de Groote was the assistant of Belgium’s Executive Director to the IMF and World Bank in Washington.

1961 Mobutu returned the power to Joseph Kasavabu, who appointed him Commander-in-chief of the army.

24 November 1965 Mobutu dismisses President Joseph Kasavubu and seizes power with support from the high command of the army, Belgian authorities, and the United States. As of this moment, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund actively support Mobutu’s dictatorial regime.

March 1966 to May 1969 J. de Groote was Congo’s chief economic advisor and an advisor of the Governor of the National Bank of Congo in Kinshasa. He was in charge of the Union minière mining company (now called Gécamines).

1970 Mobutu’s PMR becomes the only valid political party in the Congo. Official visit by the Belgian King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola to celebrate the 10th anniversary of independence. Belgium, the United States, France, and other Western powers offer military and financial support to the Mobutu regime.

1973 to 1994 J. de Groote was the Executive Director to the IMF in Washington for Belgium, which presides over a group of countries with 5% of the total votes (more than France, the United Kingdom, China, or India). From 1973 to 1991, he was also Belgium’s Executive Director to the World Bank. At the end of his term, the group over which he presided was made up of Belgium, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Austria, Luxembourg, Turkey, Belarus, Hungary, and Kazakhstan.

May 1978 Intervention of Belgian and French troops in Kolwezi to protect Mobutu from a rebellion aimed at overthrowing him.

1980 to 1989 J. de Groote was a member of the jury of the King Baudouin Foundation, which “fights against poverty and underdevelopment.”

Early 1980s According to J. de Groote, Rwandan authorities asked him to represent them at the World Bank. J. de Groote acted in favour of a devaluationDevaluationA lowering of the exchange rate of one currency as regards others. of the Rwandan franc, which served the interests of Baron van den Branden’s mine “Géomines;” the Baron then convinced the Belgian bank Nagelmaekers to give J. de Groote a loan. These facts were subsequently exposed by the Wall Street Journal. In an interview with the daily newspaper Le Soir, J. de Groote responded to these accusations: “It’s not my fault if I have a friend who has a mine in Rwanda. And if I asked him to help me obtain this loan, it’s because I wanted to avoid asking the banks myself due to my very close relations with them.” [4]

In the early 1980s, when the Third World debt crisis erupted, Rwanda (just like its neighbour Burundi) had a very low level of debt. Whereas at that very moment, the World Bank and the IMF were abandoning their policy of active lending, preaching austerity instead, in Rwanda, and Mobutu’s Zaire, they adopted a very different approach, lending them massive amounts of money. As a result, Rwanda’s foreign debt increased twenty fold between 1976 and 1994.
1982 The Blumenthal Report, written on the request of the IMF, was made public. It exposed the systematic corruption characterizing Mobutu’s regime. Nonetheless, the World Bank and the IMF increased their lending to his regime.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Jacques de Groote informed the authorities in Kinshasa what the IMF mission was expecting of them before it visited the country in 1982. At stake was a $246 million loan from the IMF.

1986 According to the Wall Street Journal, J. de Groote visited Mobutu in his villa in the South of France in August 1986.

1989-1991 Fall of the Berlin Wall and implosion of the Soviet Union, Mobutu’s regime is no longer useful to the Western powers, the World Bank, or the IMF.

Late 1990 Jacques de Groote and Alain Aboudarham start working together. The former lends a hand to the latter by helping his company pay less tax in the Czech Republic and sign a contract to build a pipeline in India.

1992-1994 Alain Aboudarham wrote: “In exchange for his consultancy work for my company from 1992 to 1994, M. de Groote earned $1,292,902 in commissions.”

1994 End of J. de Groote’s term of office at the IMF.

April-June 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, more than 900,000 Tutsis and Hutus are assassinated. France intervenes militarily in support of the genocidal regime and exfiltrates genocide perpetrators towards Congo-Kinshasa. The CADTM implicated the World Bank and IMF, which had imposed socially disastrous policies in Rwanda and supported General Habyarimana’s dictatorship until 1993.

1997 The fall of Mobutu’s regime.

1998 The fraudulent privatisation of the MUS mine in the Czech Republic begins.

1998-1999 J. de Groote becomes the President of the Appian Group, a Swiss company based in Fribourg, specialising in investments in the companies being privatised in Central and Eastern Europe, particularly in the Czech Republic. According to the Financial Times, in 2004, the Appian Group had 15,000 employees and owned the Skoda engineering group -no relation to the Skoda automobile company- (which had also been privatised) in addition to the MUS mine (purchased in 1998).

2000 A $500,000 dollar loan from Alain Aboudarham to Jacques de Groote turns bad, and their relationship becomes hostile.

2002 Alain Aboudarham puts pressure on Jacques de Groote and his Czech partners to get back his money, but is unsuccessful.

December 2004 Alain Aboudarham writes a letter to the Swiss courts to “reveal the affair.”

June 2005 Alain Aboudarham is summoned before the Swiss courts to explain in detail his denunciation. Immediately afterwards, the Swiss attorney general’s office (MPC) opens an investigation.

2004 to 2006 In the United States, different courts judge the dispute between Alain Aboudarham and Jacques de Groote.

2006 Informed of the trials in the United States, the CADTM asks Gino Alzetta, the Executive Director to the World Bank for the group presided over by Belgium, about J. de Groote’s behaviour. Gino Alzetta asserts that he saw nothing reprehensible in de Groote’s behaviour.

January to March 2008 During a “complex international financial investigation,” Swiss authorities ordered the freezing of assets worth 660 million Swiss francs on nearly 100 bank accounts in Switzerland.

21 October 2011 The Swiss attorney general’s office (MPC) transmits a bill of indictment to the federal penal court, accusing Jacques de Groote and six Czech citizens of aggravated money laundering, fraud, and other charges.

13 May 2013 The trial opens in Bellinzona in the Swiss canton Ticino. J. de Groote refuses to go the trial, and claims that he is completely innocent.

May 2013 The CADTM questions Gino Alzetta (Belgian Executive Director to the World Bank) a second time about the accusations lodged against J. de Groote. Gino Alzetta reiterates his support for J. de Groote.

October 2013 Jacques de Groote is condemned of fraud by the Swiss courts. The 5 Czechs who organised the fraud are sentenced to prison. The frozen assets (660 million Swiss francs) will be paid to the Czechs who were victims of the fraud that occurred during the privatisation.

Eric Toussaint, the president of CADTM Belgium (Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt, www.cadtm.org), is a senior lecturer at the University of Liege (Belgium). He recently published Procès d’un homme exemplaire (The Trial of an Exemplary Man), Edition Al Dante, Marseille, September 2013. The World Bank: a never-ending coup d’Etat. The hidden agenda of the Washington Consensus, VAK, Bombay, 2007. See also Eric Toussaint’s doctoral dissertation in political science Political aspects of World Bank and International Monetary Fund actions toward the Third World. He is the co-author, with Damien Millet, of Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank: Sixty Questions, Sixty Answers, Monthly Review Books, New York, 2010. La dette ou la vie (Debt or Life?) co-published by CADTM- Aden, Liège-Brussels, 2011.